Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.

Proverbs 3:5-6, NKJV

Decisions, decisions, decisions! We make dozens of them every day. From the silly to the serious; from the laughable to the life-altering; from the thoughtless to the thought-provoking. Many, perhaps most, we make without any thought at all. Some we make out of pure habit, without having to give any time to the decision. But others, many others, we make only after giving them much thought and consideration.

It is possible to give the seemingly small decisions an undue amount of thought, while making important decisions recklessly. Last night I spent time thinking about the subject matter for this blog post. This morning, I made the decision to write about decision making. Right now, as I write, I am thinking about what to eat for breakfast. I have made the decision to eat a bowl of cereal, so I am going to take a break from finishing this blog post to eat.

I have now finished eating, but while eating I decided to do several other things before returning to the task of finishing this blog. I won’t bore you with the details, but the simple point is, life is filled with decisions. One right after the other, continuously, all day, every day. So my question is, how does all this fit in with the two verses quoted above? How am I to acknowledge God in all my ways? Am I to pray about every decision, or just the big ones?

There is a passage in the Epistle of James that might shed some light on this matter. Read the following carefully and prayerfully:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

James 4:13-16, NKJV

If we think about these passages from Proverbs and James in conjunction with each other, then perhaps a little light will be shed on this matter of decision making. If we commit ourselves to the Lord, leaning on Him for guidance and understanding, then our day-to-day decisions will be made out of that dependence. We will sense His presence, and He will have access to our minds and wills so that He can freely give us guidance as we make decisions and choices.

James warns us against acting presumptuously without giving any thought to the will of God. We may make decisions that we feel are of our best interest only to find that we have made a disastrous choice that adversely affects the rest of our life.

The clear admonition is to commit our lives to Him, seeking Him in all we do, submitting ourselves to His will, acknowledging our dependence upon Him, and leaning on His understanding. As we habitually do this, we will find that He will give us clear direction as we go through our daily lives, and that wonderful peace of God will settle our minds and hearts as we walk together with Him.

Until next time:

Blessings!